Лъадал эбел, the Mother of the Water, is one of the four personified Mothers of Avar oral tradition, patroness of springs, streams and the flowing water that sustained the mountain villages. With the Mothers of earth, wind and disease she is regarded as a differentiation of a single ancestral mother-creator, the elemental waters being her portion. Her care extended to the sources and irrigation channels of the highlands, and echoes of her survive in the water-blessings and the rain and spring rites of Avar folk religion.